Remember Wise Consulting? We profiled them in a case study last year.

The big news is that Wise Consulting is now a Sonar6 service partner (our first on the East Coast) and will be providing consultation and implementation services to clients in the US. We’re excited to have them on board – it’s always gratifying when a client digs Sonar6 so much they want to share the love with others!

Some kind words from Wise Consulting President Jennifer Wise:

“From the first moment I saw Sonar6, I knew this was a great fit for evaluating and aligning our dynamic workforce.  As consultants, we are anxious to bring this success to our clients and Sonar6 customers.  We are proud to be selected by Sonar6 to represent them!”

We’re really looking forward to working closely with the Wise Consulting team to reach more of our US clients.  Exciting times…

Read more: Sonar6 & Wise Consulting Press Release

February seems to be a ‘why do we do performance reviews?’ month, with everyone busy completing their reviews or getting all introspective, pondering why they’re necessary in the first place.

Some very interesting opinion pieces on just this topic have cropped up recently: check out what Jim Holincheck, Bob Sutton and Todd Dewett have to say.

We tend to side with those arguing that the traditional understanding of performance reviews – forms filled out once a year, a perfunctory conversation (if you’re lucky), receiving your number and spot on the bell curve – is probably deserving of all the hate. Useful reviews on the other hand (and we can help you achieve those) have a place in any successful company.

One thing we think it’s important to remember is there’s a difference between performance reviews and ratings. If you don’t actually need to give ratings and rank employees, why bother? If they’re a necessary evil (ie, used when calculating compensation), then ratings and rankings still have to be reached via a robust review process.

Another thing to bear in mind: that normal distribution graph we all love so much doesn’t account for shifts over time (unless your organization really is extremely average and nobody ever gets better or worse. In which case you probably have other worries). Let go of the bell curve and base your decisions on your actual people information – it means something.

Useful reviews aren’t about assigning numbers, they’re about the conversation. Whatever tools you’re using should be gathering the information that will help you discuss performance with your employees, your managers, your exec… If they’re not, they’re not doing their job.

We don’t hate reviews, and we don’t think they’re going anywhere any time soon, but we really do feel for those poor people currently suffering through their ‘traditional’ reviews. There is a better way!

So how do you feel about performance reviews? Take the quiz to see if you’re one of the haters. Nobody’s claiming scientific accuracy, but we’re sure most people will identify with at least a couple of the responses…

Our content manager made cookies for the festive season. How cute are the little Sonar6 gingerbread people?!!

Thanks Karen!

People thrive on recognition and feedback, and this doesn’t change once they step through the office door. This is the age of Facebook and Twitter; of immediate, continuous feedback. We get it from all angles in our everyday life, so why wouldn’t we expect it at work?

Too often, feedback is delayed (annual performance review, anyone?) or negative (even though this does have its place). How often do you give praise or celebrate success? And do you give positive feedback across the board: to your top paid executives as well as the little guys working away in the background?

It doesn’t have to get complicated: employee recognition isn’t just about elaborate rewards or bonuses. While it may seem blindingly obvious, research has shown that just thanking employees results in increased engagement – and an engaged employee is a more productive employee.

As many of you know, our labs have been hard at work building a much-expanded 360° review functionality for Sonar6. The core principal behind 360° in Sonar6 is that it’s really useful getting feedback from others for many things that are measured in a performance review. For instance, if I am rating a salesperson on how well they work with customers, it’s great to get feedback directly from customers.

One of the configurable aspects of our new system is that 360° feedback can either be anonymous, or can be attributed to the person who gave the feedback.

There is a tradition of 360° feedback being anonymous. When 360° reviews were primarily used as part of a leadership development framework, it was thought that anonymous feedback would be more candid. Of course, some will tell you it was also full of inaccuracies and injustice!

Newer uses of 360° (as in Sonar6) are less about developing leaders and more about gathering input into a performance review process for all staff. In these scenarios we are seeing lots of companies go down an open feedback path, believing that any challenges in getting candid feedback are outweighed by using the process to improve team dialog.

We thought we’d make a list of the benefits of each approach from our research.

Why anonymous is good

1. People are more likely to give candid, objective feedback
2. Reduces the likelihood of punitive consequences for poor ratings (especially from subordinates)
3. Allows people with less forthright personalities to give feedback
4. Allows management to couch potentially bad or damaging feedback

Why attributed is good

1. If you are accountable for your feedback, you will put more effort into providing it
2. Prevents “back-stabbing”
3. Encourages team dialog and getting feedback out into the open
4. Removes some of the ability to “game” the system
5. Some opinions are more important than others (eg a close work-mate or a big customer), so it is useful to know
6. It is easier to address an issue if you can understand where the feedback comes from
7. Often the people with the strongest opinion (either very positive or very negative) want their feedback to be attributed
8. It doesn’t feel like your destiny is controlled by a group of anonymous people

It was probably best summed up by one manager I talked to who said “The ideal is an environment where you can give direct open feedback, safe in the knowledge that you won’t be somehow punished for it.”

I am really interested in opinions on this. Please comment!

Some interesting results from our People and Performance Audit, on the use of 360 degree feedback in different industries and different company sizes. I’ll let the pictures do the talking…

Prevalence of 360 by organization size:

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve probably all worked at companies that have produced a handbook of policies and procedures: from what to wear, to how many days leave you get on the death of your grandmother’s cousin’s best friend’s dog, to why you’re not allowed to access Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube.

Most of these policies are unnecessary most of the time; most employees will toe the line whether they’ve memorised the handbook or not (and they haven’t). Chances are you used common sense when employing the people who are now working for you, so why not assume they have the same facility? Unless you’re supremely dedicated to the cause, you’re unlikely to create a policy for every foreseeable situation, so why not make your life (and your employees’ lives) easier?

There are increasing calls for simplicity in HR policy – provide broad guidelines that assume your employees don’t need too much hand-holding: ‘be professional’, ‘be respectful, ‘don’t embarrass the company’. Possibly the most famous case of minimalist HR policy is US department store Nordstrom, which gave new employees a 5×8 card inscribed with the company’s one and only HR policy: Use good judgement in all situations.

While they’ve necessarily added more detail over the years (we live in a litigious age), the principle remains the same: treat employees like adults, capable of rational thought and possessed of common sense. Most of them probably are, and you’ll have more time to deal with the few who aren’t.

Ok the dust is well and truly settled from Chicago, so it’s time to reflect!

As always, it was a truly great show. It’s really rewarding to catch up with so many analysts, bloggers and other industry players in one place. In fact, I heard the HR Tech Conference described this year as the village square of HCM! We also caught up with lots of vendors we like, including my two top picks for creative rethinking and repackaging of HR processes: www.smartrecruiters.com – the FREE applicant tracking system, and www.rypple.com – for continuous personal feedback.

As you know, we didn’t have a booth at the tradeshow this year. Instead we went guerrilla, and it was a hit: Sonar6 wins the Guerrilla Marketing Award from HRCapitalist! Obviously not being tied to a booth meant we got to get around and talk to more people, and we found it really paid off.

It also seems that the influencers are starting to cotton on to our business model, as discussed by Brian Sommer in SMART Selling in the SaaS World. We’ve always maintained that we want to democratize performance and talent management – and to do that, it’s important Sonar6 is transparent and accessible to the people who need it. And who wouldn’t want to be called out for bringing “fresh light to the employee and team performance management darkness“?

Now for my only gripe.

As an industry we have some of the most confusing messaging I have ever come across. Honestly, I walked around the tradeshow and I couldn’t work out what a heap of the vendors actually did – it must be awful for customers!

We keep it easy though: we do performance reviews that don’t suck.

To lead a successful company you don’t need to be an expert in programming, in tax accounting, in surveying or construction: but you do need to hire people who are.

As ad guru David Ogilvy put it: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

But it’s not enough to just hire giants. You need to be prepared to manage giants, and to keep them from getting dragged down by any dwarfs that may be lurking in your ranks. If you want them to deliver big, you have to build systems that enable and encourage giant achievements – and you need to give credit where credit is due.

Hiring giants is a great strategy from a succession point of view: if each manager hires a team of people smarter than they are, there’s a strong pool of potential successors. You want someone great to take over when you step down; it’s much easier than trying to groom a dwarf for greatness.

We’re a little bit behind in introducing them to you, but a couple of months ago Argest became the first paying Quick Start customer after completing the 30 day trial.

We’re thrilled to have Argest on board: in the brief time the team have been using Sonar6 they’ve made some good use of the system and given us some very valuable user feedback. Plus they’re exactly the sort of company we developed Quick Start for, so it’s obviously doing its job!

Read more about Argest in this month’s case study (part 1 of a 2-parter).